Published 4:00 am, Saturday, September 5, 1998

The new Jean-Claude Van Damme collaboration with director Tsui Hark is something of a kaleidoscopic mess of a movie, but it has its moments.

TriStar Pictures dumped it in theaters yesterday as the last gasp of the summer action movies. A blockbuster it ain't.

It holds interest, up to a point, as a whirlwind display of Hong Kong director Tsui's kinetic imagination. But all that visual energy, too, finally becomes merely hectic.

"Knock Off" is the second film set during the British handover of Hong Kong to China last summer, and, as in Wayne Wang's "Chinese Box," that historic background seems almost irrelevant.

The movie concentrates instead on a stupefying international conspiracy involving the CIA, the Russians, what was then the Royal Hong Kong Police, gangsters and businessmen caught up in "knockoffs" -- cheap copies -- of such merchandise as designer clothing and running shoes.

Van Damme and Rob Schneider, who is becoming a watchable sidekick for action stars, are business partners who discover that the knockoffs are not limited to merchandise -- people also are not what they seem.

Tsui ("Chinese Ghost Story" and Van Damme's "Double Team") of course has a good feel for the vitality and flavor of Hong Kong street life, its down-to-earth dim sum houses, crowded marketplaces, glitzy hotels and its twisting and suddenly steep sidewalks.

The action includes a rickshaw race through the streets that begins as a business promotion and turns ugly, a rooftop cliff-hanger, and ef fective use of heavy cargo containers swinging on cables and sliding across decks.

Tsui employs slow motion, stop motion, extreme close-ups and staccato blurs among his effects, and there's something, too, for connoisseurs of explosions and the strangely beautiful colors they can produce.

One sequence involving the huge Buddha statue on Lantau island is so astounding that it almost makes up for its bizarre use as a CIA outpost in the incomprehensible plot.

Paul Sorvino, as an ominous figure, has little to do except hover ominously in the background. Schneider's character has a kinky side that's worth some laughs.

This loony story, however, is treated seriously for the most part, as if anybody really cared. Too bad. The ridiculous complications might have worked if there had been an awareness of how absurd they are.

One scene shows how a spirit of self-mockery would have helped throughout. Turns out someone is planting computer-chip bombs in knockoff denim jeans, among other exports, and the audience is treated to the sight of Van Damme ripping off his trousers.

In his films, Van Damme sometimes has seemed on the verge of breaking into the ranks of the international superstars, but this one isn't going to help much. Time is running out.

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